One of the difficulties in writing “Current Religious Thought” is that six of us contribute in alternation, which means that twelve weeks elapse between columns by any one author. This makes it almost impossible to maintain any continuity. It also makes it difficult to respond adequately in a column to those who have taken exception to one’s previous contribution. Irritations among the readers must be allowed to lie and perhaps ferment.

I am probably being more than usually presumptuous in thinking that those who are reading this also read the column I called “Accent on Youth” (December 3), that those who wrote letters care to read ever again anything I write, or that I am in any way responding to the issue that has been most troublesome.

Nevertheless I feel under some obligation to write, and to start from the easy popular sense of the word apologia, that is, an apology. I knew perfectly well that I would touch a few live wires, but it seems to have been worse than that: I seem to have crossed a few wires, judging from the fact that a great many fuses were blown. Letters poured in on me, far more than I ever received before. Although 80 per cent were favorable and most of the critical ones were rather gentle and polite, an amazing number were shocking in their sarcasm and bitterness.

First, then, I must apologize, because I hurt peoples’ feelings. A professor at a meeting recently singled me out to have a few words about all this. “I’m afraid you over-reacted,” he said. And I am afraid I did. Sam Johnson warned that one should “write in haste and correct in phlegm.” I simply wrote in haste, and as I read again (and again) what I wrote, I see all kinds of things that I should not have said or should have said better. Another kind writer pointed out that I had been entirely too negative. The article lacked balance, which means that it needed more careful thought.

I heard somewhere that Billy Graham will not answer “personal” criticisms, and Graham Greene instructed his secretary never to allow him to read negative book reviews because they unfitted him for his work. Well, I walked around for a couple of days with a little black cloud over my head because some of the criticisms were very personal and very harsh. I can only conclude that what I wrote or what these critics read hurt them or insulted them or irritated them greatly, and that they were led to respond in kind. I am sorry to have initiated this kind of exchange, and I therefore apologize.

Now comes the apologia, that is, the defense of my thesis. One thing is certain in my own mind: I was not attacking youth nor indeed youth programs as such. I know better. For nineteen straight summers I worked in private boys’ camps where in order to survive in the job you not only had to follow the program—you had to make the boys like it and like you or you were not rehired. After that I directed a large church conference program, five weeks of which were given over to young people. I have seriously lectured to serious groups on youth programs. I know that I caricatured some youth leaders, and I did so because I know the temptations to popularity and the “personality plus” approach.

I have spent all my adult years on college and seminary campuses. You may think I am now “over the hill”; let me say that if this appears to be so as you observe me objectively, it is apparent to me viscerally. Nevertheless I lectured last year to five colleges on three-or four-day assignments with much counseling time in the interstices. I have two like assignments this year. In the last two years I have spoken four times to student groups at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Wellesley. When my office door is open here, I am constantly in the counseling business. The “generation gap” is a cliché: one does or does not do well regardless of age.

But more seriously now, the Bible is an adult book, there are no youth programs in the Bible (or programs for church picnics, for that matter) and it is true that adults do palm off on youth programs what ought to be very serious concerns about themselves. The approach of the Bible is, I think, by way of the family, and I know good men and good churches that are experimenting successfully with this approach. Meanwhile there are thousands and thousands of young people who are touched only by youth programs, and great work is being done.

But again, simply to have a youth program won’t do. My first-grade teacher, Miss Watt, identified beautifully with us as I recall, but only because she was readying us for the second grade. Youth work is not the end of the matter. Whatever identification we practice to get rapport, we must not give them the false impression that what they do is satisfactory just because they are young. You play in the minor leagues first before you are worth watching in the big leagues; you practice the scales assiduously long before you appear for a violin concert. There is nothing in just being young that prepares one to dictate a curriculum or run a college or make decisions on international affairs.

And the problem is still with the elders: they sentimentalize the whole procedure; they sublet a world religion to junior; they accept carelessness, poor preparation, and blasphemy just because the kids are off the streets and in the sanctuary. And so we neglect to teach them the grandeur and the majesty and the truth that makes free in our most holy faith.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

The increasingly serious problem of keeping American churches from “excessive entanglement” with government came into sharper focus last month. Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit against the Office of Economic Opportunity for granting $123,050 to the Lutheran Resources Mobilization. Americans United officials regard the grant as a flouting of the First Amendment. According to C. Stanley Lowell, associate director, there seems to be a “creeping union of state and church in endeavors of this kind throughout the country.”

Filing of the suit coincided with the group’s twenty-fourth annual conference, held in Boston. Program participants urged Americans to heed the dangers of religious liberty implicit in parochaid and voucher plans.

Speaking at the conference, Lowell said of the defendants in the suit: “While their aim is no doubt good, the resulting entanglement of government in church affairs is anything but good.… It is certainly not the function of government to direct churches in their religious concerns, whether it does so directly or through a third party. We feel that a program concerned as this one is with mobilizing the resources of the Lutheran Church of America to deal with poverty programs is not one for government to undertake or finance.… Americans United has long encouraged churches to set up independent corporations to operate in the fight against poverty.”¹Edd Doerr, research director for Americans United, charges that an OEO program in San Jose, California, is also suspect: “Goebbels would have been proud of the methods they are using.”

We may be forgetting. Lowell argues, that church-state separation is a phenomenon original to these shores. He sees separation as the “richest jewel in America’s crown” and a prime contributor to the nation’s religious as well as political strength. Another participant in the conference, the Unitarian scholar James Luther Adams, described religious voluntarism as “America’s greatest contribution to civilization.”

Church-state experts point to Viet Nam and Northern Ireland as examples of the turmoil that can result from sectarian political pressures. Lowell, just back from Southeast Asia, said that “the steadfast refusal of U. S. officialdom to come to grips with the church-state problem in Viet Nam is one of the many tragic mysteries enshrouding that pathetic land.… Roman Catholics, although comprising only 10 per cent of the population of South Viet Nam, are the dominant political force there.”

Other observers contend that had there not been separate Protestant and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland, religious cultural enclaves would not have been perpetuated and allowed to fester.

Michael Bordeaux, an Anglican who is probably the world’s foremost expert on the state of Christianity in the Soviet Union, told the Americans United conference of the effects when atheism becomes the established religion. He noted that there has been much publicity of the Jewish rights movement of the last year or two but very little of the Christian rights movement, which preceded it by six years. He challenged the use of the term underground church, saying that Christians in the Soviet Union by and large operate unregistered churches only because their applications for registration have been refused.

Bordeaux takes a dim view of smuggling in Bibles and religious literature. Quantities of such materials confiscated by guards at the border have later been sold on the black market, he said.

Americans United, now approaching its twenty-fifth birthday, seems to be tackling issues as vigorously as ever. Not even the recent illness of its longtime executive director, Glenn L. Archer, has slowed the pace. But some influential leaders are beginning to call for changes in tactics to keep up with the times. Jimmy Allen, well-known Southern Baptist pastor who is now president of the organization, wants the issues laid bare in a way that will arouse support among today’s young people. “It’s the religiously insecure that are trying for tax money,” he contends.

The Making Of A Jew

Dr. George Tamarin, an atheist and former senior lecturer in psychology at Tel Aviv University, lost his appeal before Israel’s High Court of Justice to change his listing in the national population registry from “Jew by nationality” to “Israeli.” When Tamarin emigrated to Israel from Yugoslavia in 1949, he registered as a Jew by nationality with no religion. A religiously motivated law change in 1970, said Tamarin, gave his registration a “religious racist tinge.” He also claims he was removed from his teaching post because of religious bias.

In what was the most important decision in two years on the question “Who is a Jew?” Chief Justice Shimon Agranat reasoned that designating some people as Israelis (denoting citizenship only) and others as Jewish nationals (linking religion to citizenship) would create a schism and negate a principle upon which Israel was founded.

Agranat rested his decision on the 1970 law, defining a Jew as one who qualified under rabbinic law, which makes religion and ethnic background inseparable: “one born of a Jewish mother, or a convert.” Also under rabbinic law, a child assumes his mother’s religion.

In a related incident, naval officer Benjamin Shalit, a psychologist, and his wife, who is a British Gentile, were refused permission to register their third child as a Jew with no religion. The Shalits’ successful attempt to register their first two children that way led to the enactment of the 1970 law.

These two rulings maintain that there can be no difference between the Jewish religion and the Jewish nationality. As Prime Minister Golda Meir explained at the Twenty-eighth World Zionist Congress, “Without that identity, the Jewish people would never have survived.”

Religion In Transit

Press sources say the Internal Revenue Service has been probing into fiscal records of churches and religious organizations to determine if they have violated their tax-exempt status by excessive involvement in political and social activities.

Ninety-three students of the six-month-old Lynchburg (Virginia) Baptist College got a free nine-day tour of Bible lands, for both PR and academic reasons. The school is sponsored by the town’s 11,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, which telecasts its services on 140 stations and operates a big IBM computer to keep track of all its people and programs.

Amid charges of a secret sell-out, the historic Hartford Seminary Foundation announced it is dropping all traditional degree programs and will become instead an institution servicing those already in the ministry. It has an endowment of $11.5 million.

Deaths

CAREY A. GIBBS, 79, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tennessee and Kentucky; at Jacksonville, Florida.

ROGER HULL, 64, chairman and chief executive of Mutual of New York insurance company, influential Christian layman and philanthropist; in Stamford, Connecticut, of cancer.

SAMUEL JASPER PATTERSON, 72, former moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), and director of United Church Men, an agency of the National Council of Churches; in Richmond, Virginia.

The big Park Road Baptist Church of Charlotte. North Carolina, has voted—contrary to Southern Baptist policy—to stop requiring rebaptism by immersion of membership applicants baptized by other means in other denominations. Earlier, three other Charlotte churches were ousted from the local Southern Baptist association for adopting the same procedure.

Congressman John H. Kyl, an Iowa Presbyterian, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, pointed to the all-night prayer vigils held at the First Church of the Open Bible in Ottumwa, Iowa, as “an example for all.” The vigils are held Friday nights for American prisoners of war and servicemen missing in action.

Zion Investment Associates, a black self-help project headed by Philadelphia minister Leon H. Sullivan, has won approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell stock. The company has lost more than $1.5 million since 1965.

The United Church Observer, official publication of the United Church of Canada, has come out editorially against its denomination’s liberal stance on abortion.

Personalia

Peruvian editor-author Samuel Escobar, 34, has been appointed general director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Canada.

The United Methodist Church has tapped Topeka, Kansas, pastor Ewart G. Watts, 56, to head up denominational church-school publications. He was educated at Southern Methodist, Yale, Duke, and the Pacific School of Religion.

Controversy has ripped ranks at the deficit-ridden Church Federation of Greater Chicago. The board fired administrator Robert Burns outright after his supporters tried to rescind an earlier decision not to renew his contract upon expiration later in the year. Denominational staffers and a black churchmen’s committee accused him of insensitivity to black concerns.

Evangelist Billy Graham will receive the 1972 Distinguished Service Award at next month’s annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters.

United World Mission’s president of twenty-six years, Sidney Correll, has retired. Vice-president Gerald Boyer, a former Rockford, Illinois, pastor, will succeed him.

Pastor Herbert R. Howard of the big Park Cities Baptist Church of Dallas got applause from his congregation when he declared he would go to jail rather than allow a child of his to be bused to school by court order.

Comedian Dick Van Dyke, a United Presbyterian who has served as a National Bible Week chairman and local church elder, says he “regrets” a program in his TV series in which a “priest” and “nun” renounced celibacy and planned to marry. Reaction came from “thousands,” he says.

President Richard M. Nixon plans to speak at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Philadelphia on June 8 but will not confirm until a month in advance.

World Scene

The government of Singapore has “deregistered” Jehovah’s Witnesses and “dissolved” the local congregation of approximately 300 on grounds it is a hazard to “public welfare and good order.” Anti-government teachings and opposition by Witnesses to military service were said to underlie the action.

Latin America Mission’s (LAM) work in Colombia passed into Colombian hands in reconstitution as the Federation of Evangelical Ministries, with layman Orlando Hernandez of Cartagena as its first president. The Federation is a member of the international Community of Latin American Evangelical Ministries.

Protestant and Catholic churches in West Germany have collected nearly $250,000 to help underwrite building of a $1.4 million ecumenical center in Munich for the summer Olympic Games.

East German Protestant bishops have urged women not to make use of the country’s liberalized abortion law, which permits abortion on demand during the first three months of pregnancy.

An Italian weekly newspaper says that behind-the-scenes mediation of the Arab-Israeli Suez Canal impasse by high Vatican officials, including the papal secretary of state Cardinal Jean Villot, is taking place at the urging of United Nations executive Kurt Waldheim. The secret talks have obtained “satisfactory results” so far, the paper quotes.

Bible translation, production, and distribution continue on the upswing inside Yugoslavia, Bible Society sources report. Orthodox scholars have completed a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament and Psalms, expected to be acceptable to all Christian churches in Bulgaria. Negotiations are under way with the government for production and distribution.

If nothing else emerges from the three-year struggle over reorganization of the National Council of Churches, there may be at least some new theological definitions. Such a possibility arose at the NCC General Board’s four-day winter meeting in Charlotte.

The policy-makers took little conclusive action, but they started committee work that may influence American ecumenicity for many years. One panel was authorized to study the preamble of the twenty-one-year-old NCC constitution, with an eye to the suggestion that it might be more trinitarian with explicit reference to the Bible.

Another committee was asked to rethink the proposal for future ecumenical structure (see October 8, 1971, issue, page 44) at the point where it provides for representation from organizations “other than churches.” Currently all board members are named by member denominations. Questions were raised at the Charlotte meeting over whether the successor organization could truly be a council of churches if some of its policy-makers were not representing denominations.

How to define “church” came into focus during other discussions. A young Dutch minister, C. Henk Koetsier, gave the principal address on the subject of “development.” The Gereformeerde Kerken (Reformed Churches) executive suggested a new test, or mark, of the church. If a communion takes “development” seriously, he said, it passes God’s test.

While admitting that more theological work needs to be done on the subject, Dr. Koetsier included in his definition of development social, political, and economic action to change structures as well as individuals. Humanization is the goal, Koetsier said, and Christian groups taking him seriously run the risk of backing revolution that may be violent.

While many in the Netherlands agree on the traditional Lutheran and Calvinistic marks of the church, they do not consider development an appropriate test, he lamented.

Whether constituents of its member communions consider it appropriate or not, the NCC’s Executive Committee late last year created an ecumenical commission on justice, liberation, and development, the board was informed. In the initial stages its work is to be largely educational, but it will also encourage some of the types of action programs Koetsier described in his address. (A similar group is at work in the World Council of Churches.)

Theologians may debate the meaning of “church,” but government officials clearly may not, some members of the General Board emphasized. In a discussion of recent developments in the church-state issue, an American Baptist Convention home-missions executive, lames Christison, described a confrontation with Internal Revenue Service personnel. He related that agents asked him if he accepted for his organization their definition of “church.” The Baptist official refused to do so and also refused the IRS representatives permission to examine certain records despite the threat of prosecution. Now the matter is in the hands of lawyers, he said.

Christison’s remarks came as the board debated a resolution in which the NCC was put on record with a new definition of “free exercise of religion.” By a voice vote it approved a document reaffirming that “speaking out on public issues can be and for us is, part of the ‘free exercise of religion’ protected by the First Amendment.”

In effect, the resolution qualifies NCC spokesmen to testify in behalf of a Senate bill that would change the tax law granting exemptions only to organizations that put less than a “substantial” part of their resources into lobbying, political propaganda, and similar activities.

The concluding paragraph of the new pronouncement complains that “under the present wording of the law, particularly the vague and undefined term ‘substantial,’ it is not possible to know in advance what conduct will be construed to violate this section of the law and what will not.”

Passage of the resolution came after council policy-makers heard a review of recent church-state developments from the NCC director of governmental relations, Dean M. Kelley. He challenged the board and constituent denominations to “assert a ‘maximalist’ view of the scope of the First Amendment’s clauses rather than a ‘minimalist’ view.”

With only 125 of its 250 members registered, the board also:

• Approved 82 to 4 with one abstention a policy statement on “consumer rights and corporate responsibility” that calls for a variety of government, private, and church actions. To follow this up, the policy-makers directed a committee in charge of NCC investments to seek more advice on ethical implications of council investments.

• Heard a joint study-committee report that the time is right for Roman Catholic membership in the council and that the American hierarchy may possibly decide to apply within two years.

• Learned that its Division of Christian Education has authorized publication of a “Revised Standard Version Bible” that will include both deutero-canonical and non-canonical Apocryphal books in addition to the recognized Old and New Testament books.

• Approved a resolution on jails, prisons, and the courts that notes such “inhumanity in our present system” as the denial of bail to Angela Davis and proposes a variety of actions, including church discernment and rejection of “the patterns of racial and political oppression that are evident in our systems of criminal justice.”

• Passed a motion supporting a Washington conference March 26 and 27 on amnesty for Viet Nam era war resisters.

Church Pornography?

A suburban Milwaukee Unitarian church won the first round in a court case concerning the new sex-education course designed by the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston. Federal district judge John W. Reynolds issued a fifteen-page decision last month halting threatened prosecution of the church by district attorney Richard B. McConnell.

McConnell, who said the course may violate the state’s obscenity laws (the course includes film strips of heterosexual and homosexual acts), threatened to prosecute unless church officials submitted the materials to him and consulted him about the way in which the course would be taught. The course is used by other Unitarian churches in the country; Unitarian Church West is the first to face opposition.

NEWS

Something is happening on a number of college campuses across the nation. At the once-incendiary Isla Vista campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christ “is the most talked-about issue among the students,” says junior Gary Fischer. Nearby, a theater that once showed underground films is now a Christian bookstore frequented by hundreds of students.

“I sense we are on the verge of something big,” says Baptist minister Don Hawkinson, 31, who has organized “Committed Reach” at Albany (New York) State. His words were repeated by other campus workers in a spot check of colleges coast to coast.

Hawkinson’s group is composed mostly of new believers from Jewish and Catholic backgrounds. (Of Albany State’s 15,000 students, 40 per cent are estimated to be Jewish, 45 per cent Catholic.) Dozens are “active in daily evangelism,” says Hawkinson. They sponsor two houses named One Way Inn, evangelistic coffeehouses in the school’s cafeteria, a book table in the student center, distribution of Christian tabloids, a School of Evangelism on Saturdays, a highway missionary van to reach hitchhikers, weekly Bible-study and prayer groups.

This month scores of Christian students plan a week-long low-key witness campaign at Harvard. At another Ivy League school, Princeton, a coffeehouse known as “The Lower Room” is at the center of some heavy campus witnessing. Seminarian Slider Steuernol, who directs it, comments: “The power behind the Jesus movement is the same power behind our coffeehouse—the Holy Spirit.” He says many Princeton students are deeply committed to Christ but alienated from participating in the organized church, and that’s where the coffeehouse comes in. There are also well-attended Bible-study seminars on campus, he says.

There is probably outright revival at 9,000-student Eastern Illinois University at Charleston, Illinois. Campus minister James Robert Ross, 37, tells the story:

“From the time less than two years ago that a cadre of Christian students and I founded the Christian Collegiate Fellowship on campus we have felt God’s spirit moving among us. Last October a few students began meeting daily at 6:00 A.M. to pray for revival at Eastern.

“In January several unrelated campus projects jelled at the same time: thousands of Christian newspapers handed out on campus, an evangelical worship service in a university auditorium, a Christian coffeehouse, and an ear-splitting but heart-touching performance by E, a Jesus rock band from Indianapolis. The unfolding result has been rebirth and revival at Eastern.

“Student leader Dennis Greenwald and other students staged a big happening they billed as ‘Eastern Resurrection,’ with E as the headliners. About 500 came to the Student Union on each of two nights to hear the E’s members sing and testify. I gave a short gospel message. People were coming and going all evening, but many stayed until the Union closed at 11:30 P.M. At 11:00 P.M. students began streaming to the front, kneeling in prayer, asking others how to receive Christ. There was little pressure or regard for statistics.

“Within a week I baptized seven students. My phone was busy day and night as students called, wanting to know more about Christ, about the Christian life, about a date for baptism.

“The Fishnet, a Christian coffeehouse organized about the same time by an interdenominational group, became a meeting place where students shared with others what was happening. There were more decisions for Christ.

“There has been a minimum of organizational push. Spirit-filled students are the prime movers and witnesses. A bond of cooperation among evangelical campus groups has emerged. We all feel we have seen only the beginning of something big to come: a harvest of hundreds, perhaps thousands. Meanwhile, the Spirit is moving among us.”

Officials of many Christian colleges have detected a new mood on campus within the past two years. They speak of deeper Christian commitment, of record numbers of students involved in both spiritual-growth groups on campus and outreach projects off campus. In some cases, revival like that of the 1970 Asbury College outpouring (see February 27, 1970, issue, page 36) has taken place.

The 1,100-student North Park College, an Evangelical Covenant school in Chicago, is among the most recent to experience a spiritual surge. It happened during the last week of January in an event called Festival of Faith, and the impact has been spilling over into Midwest churches.

It started with the arrival on campus of a team of Jesus people led by youth pastor Don Williams of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Skepticism about their coming had run high among students and faculty alike; they expected another “rah rah Jesus rally,” said campus chaplain Mike Halleen, who had invited the team to lead the festival. But the hostility melted, he said, as the team fanned out to live in dorms and spent much time in serious conversation, counseling, classroom lecturing, and small-group Bible studies.

Evening meetings drew as many as 500 students. These were addressed by ex-doper Tom Rozof, 24, a street evangelist who heads up a ministry among 700 high-schoolers in Wichita, Kansas. When Rozof first arrived, the president of the freshman class complained to him that the money paid out for team travel expenses could have been used to hire a famous rock band instead. Two nights later he prayed to receive Christ.

At another meeting, hundreds responded to Rozof’s call to receive Christ, then lingered late into the night in an afterglow service marked by tearful embraces, singing, prayers, and testimonies. Prayer groups were seen scattered throughout the campus all night.

The next morning in a packed chapel service Halleen called upon faculty members to confess their commitment to Christ and their availability for spiritual leadership among the students. Nearly fifty walked to the front. Halleen challenged students to similar commitment among their peers, and amid singing hundreds crowded forward embracing the teachers and one another.

President Lloyd Allen commented that what he had seen had been his goal as a Christian educator.

Students have been sharing their experiences in area churches, on occasion sparking mini-revivals as meetings go on for hours, says Halleen. Meanwhile, he says, they have discovered that—as Williams pointed out—the college is a built-in commune where they can support one another spiritually and be a model of what it means to share in love as the body of Christ.

The Heat’S On In Duluth

What began as “just another” Jesus youth festival in Duluth, Minnesota (population 106,000), is now—by all appearances—a full-blown revival.

“I’ve lived in Duluth all my life and seen a lot of ‘church revivals,’ but I’ve never witnessed anything like this before,” observed Julie Elick, wife of a local Youth for Christ director.

Despite sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms, thousands of young people and adults jammed into meetings, with more than 1,000 reportedly praying to receive Christ. Nightly sessions began in early January and continued into February in churches, auditoriums, and the city arena. The revival spirit has meanwhile spread to nearby Superior and the outlying countryside, according to reports.

The action was spearheaded by the Jesus People of Milwaukee, a group that began last year with seven members in a former Milwaukee doper commune and has now grown to 110, living in a converted but somewhat rundown nursing home. The home has been named the Milwaukee Discipleship Training Center, and all 110 residents are enrolled in the “full-time faith school.” It is headed by ex-bartender Jim Palosaari and his wife Sue, converts from the West Coast drug scene. Quarter breaks are spent in team witnessing.

During such a quarter break the Palosaaris took a team, including the Sheep, a Jesus rock group, to Duluth at the invitation of a college student who set up a weekend stand. That’s when revival broke out, and Palosaari sent for fifty Milwaukee reinforcements.

Dino, a well-known disc jockey on a Duluth rock station, interviewed Palosaari, later attended a meeting and accepted Christ, reports a CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent. Dino has injected Jesus music into his show, says the reporter, and helped arrange a daily fifteen-minute afternoon broadcast by Palosaari.

Likewise, a Duluth Herald newspaper reporter prayed to receive Christ while interviewing Palosaari.

Last month the E music group arrived to spell the weary Sheep. Following the group’s appearance at Barnum high school in tiny Mahtowa fifteen miles from Duluth, revival broke out on campus, reports teacher Jack Smith, who is also a Covenant pastor. A number of teachers and students alike received Christ. “We were all praying, ‘Jesus, let this be real,’ ” Smith recalls. The high school, he adds, has “changed.”

“We’ve got a gusher; now we’ve got to cap it,” Palosaari said in an interview. The “capping” took place on February 12 with a Jesus march by 2,500 in below-freezing weather and a rally at the arena. Mayor Ben Boo was among the speakers. Physical healings occurred during the arena rally, according to eye-witness reports.

The event marked a transition, says Palosaari. “More than 1,500 professed Christ in the first forty days of the revival; now we must teach them.” Already, he adds, many small Bible-study and prayer groups are meeting throughout the area. The revival brought together Youth for Christ, other Christian groups, churches, and street Christians in fellowship and outreach, and that unity still exists, he says. Second Presbyterian Church provided sleeping space for the majority of the out-of-towners.

Most of the Milwaukee youths have returned to their training center, where head elder John Herrin, a former United Church of Christ minister, tends school while Palosaari continues the Duluth ministry.

The revival has ignited reaction in some quarters. A high-school principal dislikes the activism of some of his newly turned-on students and has barred them from distributing Street Level, the Milwaukee Jesus newspaper, and other literature on campus.

Further testing of a different sort may be ahead. U. S. Steel has announced it will close a large Duluth operation, throwing thousands out of work.

Bandaging Bangladesh

“We don’t want to talk to anyone. Just send us poison.” These words, spoken by three pregnant women, sum up the attitude of many of the 200,000 rape victims in Bangladesh. At least four to five thousand are now pregnant, report Bangladesh doctors. The problem of these homeless or ostracized women (their husbands and children won’t take them back), just one of numerous problems facing Bangladesh, may be the most difficult to solve.

Of the many organizations sending funds and relief packages to Bangladesh, only a few have investigated the possibility of aiding the rape victims. One is World Vision International, whose staff member Bill Kliewer, just back from Bangladesh, reports that orphanages and medical supplies may not alleviate the problem.

Doctors working in that country say the hardest part is finding these women, said Kliewer. “They’ve gone into hiding. They don’t want to talk to anyone or be identified in any way as rape victims.”

Some doctors in Bangladesh think that the number-one solution to the problem is abortion. Although the government doesn’t sanction abortion, an official notice circulated to all doctors advises them to use their “discretion” in treating these women—a notice doctors interpret as special permission to abort if they deem it in a woman’s best interests. But, the doctors say, the women won’t come to the medical centers for any kind of help. There have been rumors of numerous suicides and self-attempted abortions. Kliewer reports that one woman cut open her stomach to kill her fetus, and then killed herself.

Mother Teresa, the well-known nun who has worked in Calcutta for forty-four years, is in Bangladesh to set up an orphanage. She has advertised her phone number in the Dacca area newspapers; any woman can call anonymously to receive help. Her program appears to be the only one having any success so far. In Kliewer’s words, “Mother Teresa is doing a masterful job.”

The immediate needs of food, clothing, and shelter are easier to meet. The World Council of Churches, in cooperation with the Bangladesh government and the Roman Catholic Church, has designated about $5 million for Bangladesh relief, concentrating on a plan to to air lift protein and foodstuffs, blankets and clothing, and medical supplies and equipment when the monsoon season begins in April.

Southern Baptists have given an initial $25,000 to rebuild a village outside Feni. Their officials have asked the Foreign Mission Board for $76,500 more to finance similar projects outside Dacca, Comilla, and Faridpur.

The Mennonite Central Committee, according to spokesmen, has been in touch with the prime minister’s office in Bangladesh; the MCC in its aid program wants to work through the government and local churches. A request to Mennonite churches in the United States and Canada for $350,000 has netted more than $530,000 to date.

Of the three major disaster areas—Dinajpur. Rhulna, and Garo—Garo, the most isolated, is getting the least attention from these programs. The Garo refugees, many of whom fled to Assam across the border, have returned to find their villages gone and their schools looted or destroyed.

World Vision is sending aid into the tribal belt through the 103 Garo Baptist churches, pioneered by the Australian Baptist Missionary Society. The sixty village schools are run by three Australian Baptist missionaries, all of whom were in Garo for the war’s duration. (One of the missionaries, considered a Bangladesh leader by West Pakistani officials, was slated for assassination the day after the army retreated.) A large percentage of Garos are Christians, Kliewer said. The indigenous churches will distribute the supplies (food, clothing, seeds, ploughs, cows, and building materials) to all the Garo people, regardless of religion.

CHERYL A. FORBES

Better Entertainment

Repercussions from the financial failure of the Dick Ross Associates (DRA) film firm (see January 7 issue, page 44) are said to be hampering funding of another evangelical film-maker, Better Entertainment Productions (BEP). BEP premiered its motion picture, The Ballad of Billie Blue, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month (see review below), and holds rights to the book Run Baby Run by converted gang leader Nicky Cruz. Cruz is a central figure in David Wilkerson’s bestseller, The Cross and the Switchblade, from which DRA—now reorganizing under bankruptcy laws—made one of its two movies.

BEP’s head, dentist Robert Plekker of suburban Grand Rapids, contends that several prospective investors have backed away and a bank has called in a note early—all because of the DRA debacle. He insists BEP is sound and tightly managed, a key talking point in light of the box-office success of The Cross and the Switchblade—negated, insiders say, by inept financial management.

Plekker hopes to raise $1.5 million to underwrite The Ballad of Billie Blue by enlisting ten Limited Partners who will put up $150,000 each and split two-thirds of the profits among themselves. Five had signed aboard as of last month. (Plekker, a well-known layman in Christian Reformed Church circles, is one of two trustees of a combine that invested $100,000 in DRA; he says he has no other ties to the Ross venture.)

Plekker points out that the motion-picture screen can present Christ to millions of persons who probably wouldn’t attend a church. In the movie Plekker himself plays the part of the preacher who helps to win Billie Blue to Christ. How many of the millions of unchurched will respond as easily as Billie remains to be seen.

Billie Blue’S Ballad

Hamlet knew the value of drama for catching consciences and causing conversations:

I have heard

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their male-factions.

Evangelical film-makers are beginning to understand this. And Better Entertainment Productions, with its first release, The Ballad of Billie Blue, intends to strike viewers’ souls with the Gospel.

The realistic and believable story centers around Billie Blue, a country-and-western singer who succeeds in his field, succumbs to alcohol and drugs, and after an encounter with Preacher Bob begins to reconstruct his life and career with Christ at the center.

The film’s message is clear: man is sinful and needs salvation. But unlike many secular films that depict man’s sin, Ballad doesn’t leave the viewer with a sense of hopelessness; it shows Billie dealing effectively with his problems.

The realistic portrayal of adultery, jealousy, drunkenness, covetousness, and even murder grips the viewer. Preacher Bob doesn’t step out of his role to serve the audience a fare of pat answers and traditional preachments. This is the movie’s finest success. Preacher Bob deals directly with Billie Blue and his problems; the involvement is personal, simple, honest.

Some college students who have viewed The Ballad of Billie Blue see a development in the Christian movie since The Cross and the Switchblade. Students recognize that films like this one are a dynamic way of helping guilty viewers confess their sins and turn to Christ.

ERVINA BOEVE

Tiny Wedding Suit

Radio evangelist Jack Wyrtzen turned down the job, but the Reverend William Glenesk didn’t. Now he’s sorry he didn’t follow suit, because the pay was a mite too small.

Glenesk, the pastor of Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, who married singer Tiny Tim and his “Miss Vickie” before Johnny Carson’s 20 million televiewers, is suing the show’s producers for $500.

In order to appear on the Carson show for the wedding. Glenesk had to join the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He owes the organization $275 for his appearance, plus three years’ worth of dues; he was paid Only $265 by Raritan Enterprises. The minister voiced displeasure that the show, in effect, “expects me to pay for my appearance.” He says the $500 will cover his overdue union dues as well as his wedding fee.

Tiny Tim, who says he loves Jesus as well as Vickie, originally asked Wyrtzen to perform the ceremony, and he agreed—on three conditions: the singer had to cut his hair, cancel his performance contracts, and get out of show business and into a Bible school. Tim agreed to everything except cancellation of his immediate contracts, but Wyrtzen refused to perform the wedding.

What evangelicals say about God, Christ’s life and work, man’s present predicament and future hope, they say on the authority of the Bible. Insofar as religious knowledge is trustworthy, it derives not from subjective intuition, personal experience, or metaphysical speculation, but from divine revelation, and more specifically, the prophetic-apostolic Scriptures.

Modernist theology drove a wedge between God and the Bible, little realizing that the devaluation of Scripture involved also the discounting of God. Forsaking the miraculous—in deference to evolutionary immanentism—modernists approved only Scripture snippets compatible with their experimental theory, and scoffed at all claims for the Bible as a specially authoritative Book. Christians, they stressed, recognize only one absolute authority: God experienced personally in devotion to Jesus Christ.

This high-sounding appeal did not, however, supply a convincing reply or alternative to the evangelical commitment. Evangelical Christianity has never espoused two ultimate authorities. It considers the authority of the Bible no basis whatever for rejecting God’s authority; rather, it invokes divine authority for its commitment to an authoritative Scripture.

Evangelical Christians affirm one final authority only, the Living God. This is theological shorthand for their insistence that the final authority is solely the Living God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. That, in turn, is but an abbreviated way of affirming that the only ultimate authority is the Living God incarnate in Jesus Christ, whom Christians acknowledge to be Divine Lord and Saviour by the Holy Spirit. In conclusion, this is a summary phrasing for the full evangelical formula: the supreme authority in doctrine and morals is the Living God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, acknowledged as Lord by the Holy Spirit, whose special inspiration makes the scriptural writings the epistemic source of trustworthy knowledge of God and his will and word for man.

The world-church, projected by modernists as a fulcrum for social action amid doctrinal diversity, has fallen into much the same frustration as the United Nations, to which humanists looked as the hope of the world. The Christian churches are now more polarized and divided than at any other time in the present century, and the most conspicuous achievement of the ecumenical movement has been the substitution of larger denominational groupings for smaller ones. Worst of all, theological confusion is now so rife in many ecumenical seminaries that students are taking a rain-check on theological commitments since momentarily current views may become passé before they begin their own pulpit ministries. Many younger churchmen are simply opting for Marxism as a social ethic.

Many evangelical spokesmen had warned that the modernist erosion of an authoritative Bible would lead to the erosion also of an authoritative God, and to modernism’s deflation into humanism. Once it became evident that modernism lacked any objective basis for its attempted reformulation of the doctrine of God, modernism itself was eclipsed as a commanding influence in twentieth-century theology. The churches were deployed from the preaching of the Gospel to the promotion of socio-political change, and if persuasion and legislation would not achieve these goals, revolution would.

Mediating efforts to recover an authority of sorts for the Scriptures, by dialectical-existential theologians who deny the objective inspiration of the texts, have not held ground. These theories attracted some timid evangelicals ready to invoke the “leap of faith” as a solution for every major intellectual difficulty, yet not bright enough to see that the way into the superrational was exploited by every variety of mysticism. If the authority of the texts was to be defined solely as a development “if and as God speaks through them,” the same claim might be made for Baalam’s ass.

Among some evangelicals it seems to be becoming faddish to affirm that the Bible is authoritative while neglecting questions of inspiration and canonicity and denying the inerrancy of Scripture. This strange mix of logic may confuse a supportive constituency, but seminarians are reluctant to speak of the fallibility and errancy of that to which they assign divine authority.

The serious evangelical is called upon not simply to subscribe during installation ceremonies to revered traditions but to pervasively and coherently expound the principle of religious authority whereby one intelligibly and consistently arrives at his doctrinal commitments. If one presupposes, for example, that the creation narratives in Genesis are at bottom simply an edited version of traditions prevalent throughout the ancient Semitic world, he merely begs the critically important question whether all conceptualities assigning meaning and worth to human life are mythological, or whether among the multitudinous explanations of man’s significance and destiny, one has its basis in special divine revelation.

An evangelical who erodes all his energies contending for the inerrancy of the Bible and neglects to unsheaf its revelational content has, to be sure, a warped sense of evangelical duty. But no less tragic is the situation of the evangelical who insists that he champions the inspiration and authority of Scripture but who readily espouses critical concessions and eagerly adduces “biblical errors.” Academic responsibility and professional integrity require such a one to furnish an objective criterion for distinguishing biblical truth from what are alleged to be scriptural errors, or else students will be encouraged to receive or reject the biblical materials merely on the basis of subjective preference.

Evangelicals should be on guard against historical overviews of Christianity that underplay the role of Scripture, or that present the Bible mainly in a context of debate over its inspiration or inerrancy. A special word of caution may be added about the canard that those who assert the inerrancy of the Bible tend to be loveless because they thereby question the Christian authenticity of others. The same distortion of motives might be associated with the evangelical affirmation of the sinlessness of Jesus of Nazareth, or any other doctrinal tenet. It is sheer nonsense to convert the proposition ‘The Bible is divinely inspired, authoritative, and inerrant” into the proposition that whoever affirms these truths should lovelessly cut off anyone who rejects them. What is fundamentally at stake in any academic discussion of the authority of the Bible is not protecting human considerations and relationships but the validity of biblical truth.

CARL F. H. HENRY

PLANE TALK

The other night I was sitting in an airport lounge awaiting the arrival of my traveling companion. It had been raining for hours, and the rain was still coming down in sheets against the plate-glass window of the lounge.

I was just settling into my own thoughts when a red-faced drunk in rumpled clothes staggered in and asked a question of one of the baggage-handlers. Apparently not liking the answer, he shook his head and made his unsteady way toward me.

He stopped immediately in front of my seat, weaving back and forth on his feet. I prepared myself for a plea for financial assistance, but instead he asked, “Can you tell me where gate twenty is?”

I noticed he was clutching an airline ticket. Trying to be helpful I said, “Go through the door over there into the main terminal and you’ll see signs pointing to the different gates.”

“It don’t work that way,” he said with a frown, turning away abruptly with a swaying stagger toward the young woman sitting next to me.

“Where is gate twenty?” he demanded in a louder and more belligerent tone. Startled out of her magazine reading, the girl began to repeat the directions I had given. “Go through that door into the terminal and I think it’s to the …”

“Grwaf!” said our inquisitor, flinging his hands toward us in a gesture of disgust. And with that he made his way purposefully but unsteadily through the exit into the pouring rain.

“I hope he makes it,” I said to the girl next to me. I was surprised to hear a burst of laughter from behind me, where other travelers had been observing the encounter.

There was some discussion among us about the strange behavior of this fellow who rejected all attempts to direct him in the way he should go.

My companion soon arrived, and we completed our arrangements and boarded our appointed flight.

I felt a little frustrated as I thought again about the fellow in the airport, wondering if he was still standing in the rain and dark holding a perfectly good airline ticket that wasn’t going to take him anywhere.

Perhaps that’s the way God feels sometimes about us.

CHURCH VS. STATE

May I offer congratulations on your statements concerning church and government in the editorial “From Servant to Advocate” (Feb. 4). Our government has enough problems to deal with today without having to become a part of a church-government struggle. Yet many people feel that things could be much better if the Church applied pressure and got help from the government at all levels.…

The Catholic Church seems to feel that the federal, state, and local governments owe something to them and that this is another means to get what they feel they have coming. One cannot help but wonder if the motivation behind this agency is for the good of the “poor and oppressed Americans” or if this is just another step toward getting more direct help from the governments to benefit the Catholic Church. I should point out that the Catholic Church is not the only church involved in this type of lobby, but the editorial points directly to this newly created agency of the Catholic Church.

Especially good, I thought, were your comments regarding the Church and [how] its proper action could relate to handling the problems at the grass-roots level without recourse to the government, if it were properly sensitized. More churches need to be aware of the people and problems around them and within their own groups. If the proper motivation is used and the situations are handled properly as they arise, then many conflicts and problems could be avoided. I feel you are to be commended on your comments in this type of editorial and for your encouragement to all churches in their dealing with these problems. Our churches need to be concerned with the spiritual revelations as you have stated and let the government deal with their “side of the coin.”

Minister of Education and Youth

First Baptist Church

Lee’s Summit, Mo.

TWOFOLD SIGNIFICANCE

As an Englishman working in America I would like to express my very great gratification at your understanding and sympathetic editorial on the significance and value of our monarchy (“Britain’s Big Secret,” Jan. 21). We feel that it makes for public spirit and good government to have the symbolical head of state, to whom loyalty is due, separated from the office of chief executive in the government, because the latter is bound to be a figure of political controversy. However, our good fortune is a thing which it is virtually impossible to share, for it is hard to imagine a new monarchy coming into existence in the modern equalitarian world! History has made each nation what it is, and one has one good thing in its heritage, and another another. The Queen also has another important significance. Because she is the head of the earthly polity of the national church, her office also symbolizes our national recognition of the Christian religion. It will be realized that there is complete religious liberty in Britain. The national Churches of England and Scotland are not paid for by the state, nor is their preaching in any way controlled by the government. However, the nation does corporately recognize the Christian faith as the national religion. The value of this is seen in the sad circumstance that if a nation ceases to be “one nation under God” and sets up as a purely secular society, it inevitably slips into the national patronage of unbelief and materialism.

Professor of Church History

Candler School of Theology

Emory University

Atlanta, Ga.

GOING FARTHER

When you say in your editorial “Accord on the Eucharist” (Jan. 21) that “Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others have a stake in the proceedings,” I wonder if you realize that the Lutheran/Roman Catholic dialogue has gone farther than the Roman Catholic / Anglican formulated statement to which you refer.

On 15 December 1967 the U. S. National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs published an extensive document entitled “The Eucharist as Sacrifice” in which the objective, real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is affirmed in concord.

Then in 1970 the same dialogue group published a further document entitled “Eucharist and Ministry” in which the Roman theologians call for the recognition of the validity of Lutheran ordination, stating:

We have found serious defects in the arguments customarily used against the validity of the eucharistic Ministry of the Lutheran churches. In fact, we see no persuasive reason to deny the possibility of the Roman Catholic Church recognizing the validity of this Ministry. Accordingly we ask the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church whether the ecumenical urgency flowing from Christ’s will for unity may not dictate that the Roman Catholic Church recognize the validity of the Lutheran ministry and, correspondingly, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharistic celebrations of the Lutheran churches.

Hope Lutheran Church

Mojave, Calif.

While you raise the tradition-bound questions of the how and the why of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, Lutherans will rejoice over the recent Roman Catholic-Anglican statement on Holy Communion. On the one hand this statement avoids any reference to a sacrificial offering up of Christ to God in the mass but rather stresses the grace of God and the once-for-all atoning value of Christ’s death and resurrection. The statement also points out that an encounter with Christ in the sacrament is life-giving only when met with faith. This seems to be an answer to concerns which evangelical Christians have been expressing for centuries.

On the other hand the statement expresses the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. This is a means of grace. Through the sacrament the life of the crucified and risen Christ is transmitted to the Church. Christ’s body and blood are given in order that, receiving them, believers may be united in communion with Christ.

As an evangelical Christian and confessing Lutheran who is interested in true ecumenicity I would urge fellow Protestants to demonstrate more heartfelt joy over this statement. If in evaluating the statement it is necessary to remember the statements of such great reformers as Calvin and Zwingli, it might be well to hear again the words of another great reformer, Martin Luther, who said, “The benefits of this sacrament are pointed out by the words, ‘given and shed for you for the remission of sins.’ These words assure us that in the sacrament we receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.”

For evangelical Christians who pride themselves on a high view of biblical authority, here is an opportunity to come to grips with the teaching of Paul on the Eucharist in First Corinthians 10 and 11. “Christ is real,” we keep saying. Then let him be really present when the Church gathers for spiritual refreshment at the Lord’s table.

Courtenay, British Columbia

A SMALLER REQUIREMENT

Your January 21 issue carried an article by Russell Chandler entitled “Christian Paperbacks: Potent Evangelism.” In the article Mr. Chandler refers to our paperback ministry, and we are grateful for the recognition.

However … Chandler says of Hearthstone that “$1,000 to $5,000 investment is required for initial inventory”.… This is a misleading statement. Any distributor can enter the Hearthstone program with as little as $15 and no inventory. The fact that some … people who want to handle an area for us do invest $1,000 to $5,000 in inventory to cover their areas, is not the same as a required initial inventory for distributors, as your article implies.

President

Hearthstone Publications, Inc.

Williamsport, Pa.

God is the god of the infinite, and he is also the God of the infinitesimal. The God who brought the universe into existence and who sustains it by the word of his infinite wisdom and power is the God who is concerned about and sovereign over the infinitesimal details of human existence.

Three times within the past twenty-four hours I have seen this marvelous truth unfold before my eyes again, as it has thousands of times before. In such experiences, as I note the exquisite timing and minute detail of the way God takes over to make things happen, I feel an impulse to bow my head and worship.

Although the Bible plainly teaches this great truth, many Christians ignore it, to their sorrow. As a result, instead of peace there is tension in their lives, and failure rather than success. The sovereign God of the universe is interested in every detail of our lives, but he is often thwarted in his loving purposes by our lack of interest.

Abraham was not only the “father of the faithful” but also the father of those who put their faith squarely on the line of God’s leading. Concerned lest his son should marry one of the pagans by whom they were surrounded, he sent his servant back to his home country to find a wife for Isaac.

Abraham knew what he was doing, for the servant to whom he entrusted his mission was a godly man, a man of prayer. On arriving in Mesopotamia at the city of Nahor the servant stopped and prayed—not in pious generalizations but with a specific request: “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, grant me success today, I pray thee, and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the maiden to whom I shall say, ‘Pray let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac. By this I shall know that thou hast shown steadfast love to my master.”

Even while he was praying, a young woman came out to draw water, and at the servant’s salutation she did exactly that for which he had prayed.

In this incident, Abraham’s servant saw the miracle of God’s answer to his prayer for unmistakable guidance in his mission. We read, “The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord, and said, ‘Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the LORD has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen’ ” (Gen. 24:26, 27).

Some have the mistaken notion that God intervenes on our behalf only in the “big” and “important” things of life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the “small” problems we face may have tremendous potential for good or bad, and many of the seemingly “unimportant” details of our daily lives prove in the end to have been vital.

God wants us to confide in him about things that, though they might be trivial to others, are important to us. He wants to be able to give help and guidance far beyond anything we have expected from him.

Unquestionably, the key to such an experience is personal surrender—a willingness to know and to do God’s will in a given matter. Then, on God’s part, there is his purpose and his pleasure to direct his children, for their good and for his glory.

Do we “bother” God when we talk to him about the trivialities of daily life? Far from it! It is the will of our Lord to undertake for us in all these things. Only our blind ignorance and stubborn wills stand between us and blessings untold.

The Apostle Paul was not indulging in idle fancy when he wrote: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6, 7).

This admonition specifies “anything” and “everything.” God knows that each of us is confronted by problems, difficulties, and uncertainties. He knows that our outlook is often beclouded so that we do not know which way to turn. He also knows that every day seemingly minor things arise in our lives that call for his loving guidance.

It is very probable that our Lord had our need for guidance in mind when he said, “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

If we search our hearts we realize that it is pride that keeps us from stepping out of our self-life into a blessed companionship with our Lord in which we talk with him about anything, knowing that he is interested. In a number of instances in the Bible, we are told that Christ’s power was denied or limited “because of their unbelief.” The situation is no different today.

One of the greatest stumblingblocks to the Christian’s acceptance of the guidance and wisdom of God is his failure to realize that this relationship with God is the most personal thing in all the world. When we arise in the morning it is natural for us to greet our loved ones. But do we also speak to our Lord words of love, trust, and dependence? Do we surrender our wills to him and ask that his presence and power flood our souls? If not, we are missing some of the greatest blessings possible to the believer.

When the Apostle Paul admonished the Philippian Christians to stop worrying and to ask God to take over in their lives, he told them to do so with “thanksgiving.” And why not? Surely we finite beings should have hearts filled with thanksgiving at the fact that we can turn all our cares over to the infinite and loving God!

I once heard a Christian spoken of with derision because he said he always asked God to help him find a parking place. He might drive around the block a dozen times before he found a place, he said, but “then it will be God’s time and God’s place.” He was right. When we are in God’s time and place, we are in the center of his will. Romans 8:28 applies to the “big” things and to the “little.”

We are responsible for being alert and obedient, of course, but once we have committed everything to God, the problem is his, not ours. God never fails the one who puts his trust in him. For this reason Paul can end his exhortation with these words, “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7).

When we have surrendered to God, trusted in him implicitly, and relaxed in him, then we feel peace, for we have turned over our anxieties and perplexities to the everlasting God of the infinite, who is also the God of the infinitesimal.

Commentary on the Gospel of John (a part of “The New International Commentary on the New Testament”), by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 1971, 936 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by James M. Boice, pastor, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

There was a time not very long ago when the names of Dodd, Bernard, Barrett, Hoskins, and Davey were linked to the four most significant commentaries on the Gospel of John in English. No longer. The commentaries that these five great English scholars provided have not declined in value; no recent discoveries have totally overthrown their approaches to the Fourth Gospel. The situation has changed simply by the appearance of several new giants in the Johannine commentary field.

The first of the new challengers was the two-volume commentary on John prepared by Father Raymond E. Brown for the Anchor Bible series. The first volume of that 1,208-page study appeared in 1966, the second in 1970. Earlier this year there appeared the English translation of the monumental and widely influential commentary on John by Rudolf Bultmann, which was first published in German in 1941 (see review in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 16, 1971, p. 13). Now, almost on the heels of Bultmann’s work, there comes the larger and equally comprehensive tome by Leon Morris, which may be the best commentary on any book of the Bible by an evangelical in recent decades. It is certainly the largest and most thorough evangelical commentary on the Fourth Gospel.

The dust jacket of this work tells us Morris spent “several years” on this volume. That is an understatement. Actually, Morris has been at work on John’s Gospel for the last ten years, and although the work was not without interruptions, still much of his effort during this time has gone into it. Two years ago a volume of Studies in the Fourth Gospel, a by-product of his work on the commentary, appeared, and before that two other works: The Dead Sea Scrolls and St. John’s Gospel (1960) and The New Testament and the Jewish Lectionaries (1964). In recent years Morris has also written commentaries on Thessalonians, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, The Cross in the New Testament, and other volumes.

In some ways the answers of this principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, to the traditional problems associated with the Fourth Gospel are of less importance than the details of the verse-by-verse commentary. Yet the answers deserve mention also, if only because many will use them to assess the commentary. Morris holds to the traditional Johannine authorship, including the identification of the beloved disciple as the Apostle John. He believes that John wrote the entire Gospel, including the disputed twenty-first chapter. Verse 24 may be an exception. Morris also quite naturally holds to a fairly early dating of the book, though he is not specific. He expresses “an opinion” for a date before A.D. 70 and the fall of Jerusalem, but he does not rule out Albright’s preference for a date in “the late seventies or early eighties.”

An interesting feature of Morris’s commentary is the inclusion of supplemental discussions of important words or issues at strategic points throughout the volume. These are called “Additional Notes” and occur on: the Logos, the world, the Son of Man, truth, believing, the Paraclete, miracles, the Last Supper and the Passover, and the right of the Jews to inflict the death penalty. The section of John dealing with the woman taken in adultery is treated in an appendix to the entire volume.

All the “Additional Notes” are interesting, but I found those on miracles and the dating of the Last Supper and the Passover most stimulating. The section on miracles points out the extraordinary significance of the Johannine “signs.” Morris notes and comments on Jesus’ apparent preference for the word works. The note on the Last Supper and the Passover is an informative discussion of recent evidence bearing on the apparent conflict between the dating of the Last Supper and the crucifixion in John and the Synoptic Gospels. Morris feels that the best explanation is found in the existence of more than one calendar, one of which was followed by Jesus and his followers and the other by the temple authorities.

The best way to measure the value and flavor of this work is to delve into it. On God’s sovereignty and electing grace in John’s Gospel:

People do not come to Christ because it seems to them a good idea. It never does seem a good idea to natural man. Apart from a divine work in their souls … men remain contentedly in their sins. Before men can come to Christ it is necessary that the Father give them to Him [p. 367].

On God’s wrath:

We may not like it but we should not ignore it. John tells us that this wrath “abideth.” We should not expect it to fade away with the passage of time. If a man continues in unbelief and disobedience he can look for nothing other than the persisting wrath of God. This is basic to our understanding of the gospel. Unless we are saved from real peril there is no meaning in salvation [p. 250].

On faith:

Basically faith is trust. But in our reaction against the view that faith means no more than a firm acceptance of certain intellectual propositions we must not go so far as to say that it is entirely a matter of personal relations. It is impossible to have the kind of faith that John envisages without having a certain high view of Christ. Unless we believe that He is more than man we can never trust Him with that faith that is saving faith [p. 447].

With passages like these set in the midst of a detailed and comprehensive commentary, Morris has produced a study that is somewhat like his own description of the Fourth Gospel: it is “a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim.” It will be useful for the beginner in faith as well as for the mature Christian or biblical scholar.

Not To Be Avoided

The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States, by Vinson Synan (Eerdmans, 1971, 248 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Donald W. Dayton, assistant professor of bibliography and research and acquisitions librarian, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Vinson Synan is chairman of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Emmanuel College, Franklin Springs, Georgia. This book was his 1967 dissertation at the University of Georgia. Comparison with the original reveals only minor changes. Most interesting of these is the addition of “Holiness” to the title to emphasize “the overriding thesis … that the historical and doctrinal lineage of American pentecostalism is to be found in the Wesleyan tradition.” Others have advanced this thesis but have not defended it with such detailed and careful documentation. This work will surely rank with the most important interpretations of the origins of American Pentecostalism.

The author traces the development of Wesleyan theology with its emphasis on sanctification as a second work of grace subsequent to conversion, dwelling in particular upon the advocacy of this doctrine by the American Holiness Movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Among the many sects that emerged from this movement at the turn of the century were the various groups named “Church of God” and also the “Fire-Baptized Holiness Church” (which emphasized a third experience beyond sanctification). Charles F. Parham, to whom most students trace twentieth-century Pentecostalism, had some contact with the founder of this last group. Building on this foundation, Synan treats the well-known “Azusa Street revival,” Pentecostalism’s sweeping of Southern holiness churches, and the development of the “Assemblies of God” and the “Jesus Only” movements, as well as other more recent events.

Although Synan claims his book is not an apology, it is difficult not so to understand such statements as “a product of Methodism, the holiness-pentecostal movement traces its lineage through the Wesleys to Anglicanism and from thence to Roman Catholicism.” On one level this may be true, but one may question whether the “second blessing” theology of the American Holiness Movement preserved the nuances of Wesley’s teaching on “Christian Perfection” and also whether the thrust of the American movement is caught in Synan’s emphasis on the occurrence of such “motor phenomena” as the “jerks” and the place of religious emotion in prefiguring the Pentecostal emphasis on physical evidence of Christian experience.

Nevertheless, Synan’s thesis will stand in its broad outline. It is most nearly true of his own denomination, the Pentecostal Holiness Church (the group that Oral Roberts left when he joined United Methodism), and probably more true in the South, where the holiness movement was more radical in nature. No one really interested in understanding the rise of Pentecostalism in this century can avoid this book.

Newly Published

Rouault: A Vision of Suffering and Salvation, by William A. Dyrness (Eerdmans, 235 pp., $8.95). A penetrating analysis (see editorial, page 29).

Survival on the Campus: A Handbook for Christian Students, by William Proctor (Revell, 157 pp., $3.95). An invaluable aid to the beginning college student. From his own difficult experience as a Christian at Harvard, Proctor maps out a strategy for achieving spiritual growth through maximum involvement with non-Christians and their challenges to faith. He presents realistic approaches to problems of intellectual confrontation, drugs, sex, division among campus Christians, and political movements, using compelling illustrations from student’s lives.

A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, edited by William L. Holladay (Eerdmans, 425 pp., $15). A well-done abridgment for seminarians and preachers of the standard Koehler-Baumgartner (which costs more than twice as much).

The Returns of Love: Letters of a Christian Homosexual, by Alex Davidson (Inter-Varsity, 93 pp., $1.50 pb), and Forbidden Love: A Homosexual Looks for Understanding and Help, by John Drakeford (Word, 149 pp., $4.95). Homosexuals are real people for whom Christ died, but one would never guess that from the lack of attention to them and their problems in evangelical literature. A warm welcome therefore to these two ground-breaking, helpful introductions.

It Is Written, by Jacob A. O. Preus, and The Apostolic Scriptures, by David P. Scaer (Concordia, 74 and 68 pp., $1.75 each pb). Defenses of evangelical views of the Bible based on Christ’s attitude and his delegation of authority to the apostles.

Trinity Studies: Volume I, No. 1 (2045 Half Day Road, Deerfield, Ill. 60015, 62 pp., $1.75 pb). A journal launched at Trinity with a report on an imaginary Vatican III by one of the professors, and studies of Rauschenbusch, Bultmann, and the destiny of those who do not hear the Gospel by three of the students. The goal is twice-yearly publication.

Commentary on the Old Testament, by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch (10 volumes, Eerdmans, $69.50). Long a standard set for Bible students with some knowledge of Hebrew. This nineteenth-century evangelical classic was formerly bound in twenty-five volumes and sold at a higher price.

Experiential Religion, by Richard R. Niebuhr (Harper & Row, 143 pp., $5.95). A very scholarly and dispassionate analysis of religious psychology, less concerned with what evangelicals think of as Christian experience than one might expect.

Vox Evangelica: Volume VII, edited by Donald Guthrie (London Bible College [Green Lane, Northwood, Middlesex, England], 87 pp., $2 pb). Essays on Paul by F. F. Bruce, immortality by H. D. McDonald, John by D. R. Carnegie, and theological education by H. H. Rowdon.

Understanding Speaking in Tongues, by Watson Mills (Eerdmans, 88 pp., $1.95 paperback), and New Testament Teaching on Tongues, by Merrill F. Unger (Kregel, 175 pp., $1.75 pb). Two who don’t speak in tongues look primarily at what Acts and First Corinthians have to say. Unger takes a harsh approach, acceptable only to those who agree with him in advance. Mills is appropriate for those who have had favorable encounters with Pentecostalism but want to see how others understand the relevant Scriptures.

The Jesus Freaks, by Jess Moody (Word, 127 pp., $3.95 and $.95). Not at all what you might think. Rather than being only about the movements of youth recently converted to Christ, it is a potpourri of testimonies to all kinds of “spiritual” experiences and outlooks. Fully one-third of the book is a list of addresses of so-called Liberated Churches, almost all of which are basically humanistic.

Christianity and the Class Struggle, by Harold O. J. Brown (Zondervan, 223 pp., $1.25 pb). A study of some of the divisions in society—economic, racial, generational—with a call for a distinctively Christian response. Slightly revised, soft-cover reissue of a 1970 publication.

Servants of Christ, edited by Donald G. Bloesch (Bethany Fellowship, 181 pp., paperback, $1.95). An inside look at the important ministry of the deaconess, its origin, present status, and future. While concentrating on the diaconate within the Lutheran church, the editor has included an essay on the deaconess in the Anglican communion as well as an evaluative essay by a Roman Catholic sister.

The Justification of the Law, by Clarence Morris (University of Pennsylvania, 214 pp., $12.50). A careful treatment of the philosophy of law in society. Pays some attention to natural law but none to prescriptive revealed law.

Grace and Freedom, by Bernard Lonergan (Herder and Herder, 187 pp., $9.75). The sudden popularity of Bernard Lonergan motivated the 1971 publication of his earliest, altogether classic work on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It not only furnishes a good analysis of Thomas’s views but also reminds the reader of what Roman Catholic theology stood for until recently.

The past year witnessed the production of a number of useful Old Testament books but few, if any, that could be considered outstanding. Even those that, by virtue of the significance of the subject or the venerability of the author, might be expected to merit top billing, usually fall short of greatness. This is not to deny that all our selections are good books; rather, it is to claim that most of them might have been better. In the paragraphs that follow, I have marked with an asterisk (*) those books suitable for the reader without seminary training. Other selections are primarily for the specialist.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS Perhaps the most impressive works to appear are those in biblical and extra-biblical history. Under the editorial direction of Benjamin Mazar, volumes two and three (The Patriarchs and Judges) of The World History of the Jewish People* (Rutgers) provide a comprehensive linguistic, cultural, religious, and political coverage of the period from Abraham through the rise of the monarchy. Chapters are provided by such well-known scholars as the late E. A. Speiser, Yigael Yadin, H. L. Ginsburg, C. H. Gordon, and Y. Aharoni. The critical position is moderate, illustration is sometimes lavish, and coverage is unusually thorough. Several chapters are complete monographs on the subject while others seem rather a kind of summary article for inclusion in a more general history. This unevenness does mar the work, though no chapter is without merit. Such a book will not replace a general treatment like J. Bright’s History of Israel; nevertheless, it deserves wide distribution.

From a secular standpoint we welcome publication of the revised edition of the second part of volume one of “The Cambridge Ancient History,” The Early History of the Middle East (Cambridge), edited by I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, and N. G. L. Hammond. Chapters have been appearing separately since 1964, and it is now gratifying to find within one binding such a wealth of data on the biblical world from ca. 3000 B. C. down through the period of the earliest patriarchs. The first edition of this history has been a classic in its own right; the revised edition now takes its place, and we look with anticipation to the arrival of future volumes.

The year’s leading contribution in archaeology comes from the British scholar Kathleen Kenyon. Her Royal Cities of the Old Testament* (Schocken) combines coffee-table format and illustration with excellent technical discussion of those few cities from Solomonic times onward that were specially the cities of the king (Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Samaria). Recent material from Jerusalem’s temple area, richly supplemented with the latest finds from excavations at Gezer and Hazor, makes this volume a valuable introduction to the subject.

An important study of a problem that has long intrigued biblical scholars comes in the form of a monograph entitled Who Were the Amorites? (Brill) by Alfred Haldar. Supporting evidence from texts is given for the derivation of the Sumerian MAR.TU (whence Akkadian amurrum) from the city name of Mari on the middle Euphrates. Further chapters relate the Amorites to settlement in the territory between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, discuss their social and political organization, and further elucidate their relation to Babylonian society.

OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY Two short books that attempt a summary of Old Testament theology for the layman are Ronald Youngblood’s The Heart of the Old Testament* (Baker) and J. D. W. Watts’s Basic Patterns in Old Testament Religion* (Vantage). Youngblood approaches the subject through chapters on monotheism, sovereignty, election, covenant, theocracy, law, sacrifice, faith, and redemption. No attempt is made to give a real unity to Old Testament theology, a fact that makes this book less than ideal, though the treatment throughout is accurate, biblical, and well cast in laymen’s language. Watts divides his Old Testament theology into three basic patterns: the patriarchal pattern, that followed by Abraham; the amphictyonic, the religion of Moses; and the monarchical, the religion of Israel after the Davidic period. Although the book is a valuable attempt to cast current Old Testament theology in a form useful for the layman, we could wish it were more the author’s own synthesis and a little less a popularization of the latest German scholarship.

Evangelicals will note with interest the appearance of the first of two volumes of a new work in biblical theology by a member of the Mennonite tradition. Chester K. Lehman’s Biblical Theology, Volume 1: Old Testament* (Herald) may not be the final answer to the need for a first-rate evangelical theology of the Old Testament, but it will be a valuable addition to the limited literature in the field. Lehman cheerfully acknowledges his dependence on the work of Gerhardus Vos, and in a sense his book is an attempt to set forth the principles of historically based revelation in the tradition of the great Princeton scholar.

Of standard works in the same field, no one-volume presentation has had wider reception than An Outline of Old Testament Theology (Blackwell) by Th. C. Vriezen. Students will welcome a fully revised and enlarged edition that appeared in 1971, taking into account current work (particularly that of von Rad) and arguing strongly for the unity of Old Testament theology.

EXEGETICAL TOOLA Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Eerdmans), edited by William Holladay, meets a longstanding need for a lexicon intermediate between pocket-size glossaries and massive, expensive tomes. This is a skillful abridgment, using the latest available portions, of the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon, which remains valuable for the specialist. Seminarians and pastors will be well served by this tool.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND INTRODUCTION The year’s leading contribution comes in the form of a published dissertation from Rome. Sean A. McEvenue, in The Narrative Style of the Priestly Writer (Pontifical Biblical Institute), has produced a most engaging literary study comparing passages of the so-called P Document with various genres of children’s literature. As a book that challenges deeply held assumptions (e.g., that “P” is a “rather superficial, pure, bloodless, theological writing”), this work is sure to provoke some reaction and open an old subject to new forms of debate.

A second significant work, Joel and the Temple Cult of Jerusalem (Brill) by G. W. Ahlstrom, considers the terminology, phraseology, and historical allusions in the Book of Joel. The author concludes from his detailed and comprehensive study that the prophecy was an attack on syncretistic and idolatrous elements within the cult of the second temple, sometime between 515 and 500 B. C. A closing chapter on composition finds the oracles of Joel originally spoken to the people of Jerusalem and later written down, either by the prophet or by some of his disciples, with no verses that need be considered secondary.

MONOGRAPHS ON BIBLICAL-THEOLOGICAL THEMESMan, God’s Eternal Creation* (Moody) by R. Laird Harris is a potpourri of data about man found in the Old Testament. The author, long known for ingenious, if not always convincing, solutions to problems of Old Testament history, has now brought together in one volume much of his collection (e.g., the Hebrew word for “flood” means “storm,” and what covered the higher regions was a snowstorm lasting most of a year!). A significant part of the book is devoted to questions of science and Scripture, with chapters on culture, worship, warfare, and the afterlife to round out the feast.

A second stimulating monograph studies the relation between the eighth-century Isaiah and the wisdom movement of that day. J. William Whedbee’s Isaiah and Wisdom (Abingdon), originally a Yale dissertation, looks at the parables, proverbs, and woe oracles in Isaiah, together with the attitude of the book toward counsel and counselors. Whedbee concludes that Isaiah manifests strong influences from the wisdom traditions of the Jerusalem court, part of which involved his use of wisdom forms to meet the problems of eighth-century Judah. This context, according to the author, provided a creative stimulus for Isaiah in shaping his message to the needs of his day.

Our next selection doubles as an introduction to the Wisdom books and a study of wisdom in its general biblical setting. The Way of Wisdom in the Old Testament* (Macmillan) by R. B. Y. Scott is designed for the general reader and presents wisdom as a movement in Israel with an influence equal to that of the prophets. Scott points out the considerable common ground between the wise men and the prophets, though acknowledging their differences, and stresses the need for wisdom’s message in the midst of our morally confused contemporary society.

Some old but much new ground is covered in Carroll Stuhlmueller’s Creative Redemption in Deutero-Isaiah (Pontifical Biblical Institute), a book that reaffirms the primacy of the redemption theme in Isaiah 40–55 and thoroughly explores the subordinate theme of creation in its relation to redemption. Here is a volume that demonstrates the continuing quality of doctoral work being done at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and provides a focal point for all future discussion of an important theological motif.

Yet another provocative book that originated as a doctoral dissertation, this one at Cambridge, is Ancient Israel’s Criminal Law (Schocken) by Anthony Phillips. Phillips argues that there was a clear distinction between criminal and civil offenses in Israel, and that the Decalogue with its covenant stipulations was in fact Israel’s criminal code. After examining each of the “Ten Words,” the book closes with a short history of the concept of criminal law in Israel from the time of Sinai through the post-exilic period.

COLLECTED ESSAYS It has recently become popular to collect in one volume some of the more important journal articles written by a scholar of note. Readers will welcome the appearance in English of fifteen essays from the pen of the late Dominican Roland deVaux, under the title The Bible and the Ancient Near East (Doubleday). Outstanding articles discuss biblical interpretation (e.g., “The Remnant of Israel”), archaeology (“The Sacrifice of Pigs in Palestine”), and biblical theology (“Is it Possible to Write a ‘Theology of the Old Testament’?”).

A second collection of essays, also from a Roman Catholic scholar, is “in large measure a by-product of editorial work on the New American Bible.” Studies in Israelite Poetry and Wisdom (Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monographs) offers twenty-six articles by Monsignor Patrick W. Skehan, most of which have to do with translation problems in the Wisdom books. Ten of the author’s book reviews and a complete bibliography of his work complete the volume.

A significant collection of technical essays appeared in honor of the best-known biblical archaeologist on his eightieth (which proved to be his last) birthday. Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright (Johns Hopkins), edited by Hans Goedicke, includes thirty-four contributions, most of them bringing archaeological discovery to bear on specific Old Testament questions.

Two further anthologies are concerned with Ancient Near Eastern backgrounds to the Bible. Toward an Image of Tammuz and Other Essays (Harvard) brings together the best work of the great Sumerologist Thorkild Jacobsen. Several articles on history and mythology will commend themselves to biblical students (note especially the title article) while grammarians will appreciate authoritative treatment of Sumerian and Akkadian verbs. A second, smaller book, Essays on the Ancient Semitic World (University of Toronto), edited by J. W. Wevers and D. B. Redford, combines three articles on Assyria and Egypt with four useful studies in Hebrew philology. The latter category includes a fresh approach to metrical analysis in Hebrew poetry, an article on the passive Qal, and two articles on Hebrew phonics.

COMMENTARIES The past year saw the appearance of several exegetical commentaries, though none of the scope that has marked publications of recent years. Two volumes were issued in “The New Century Bible” (Oliphants). J. Philip Hyatt’s Exodus* is committed to classical documentary division of the book, but contains helpful introductory material and a clear exposition of the text. Useful for the same reasons (though, like all volumes in the series, overpriced) is First and Second Samuel* by John Mauchline. Particularly valuable in both volumes is the wealth of contemporary bibliographical data.

Contributions to Doubleday’s “Anchor Bible” are still coming out slowly. Nineteen seventy-one brought only Carey A. Moore’s slim but scholarly treatment of Esther*. Although not all readers will be comfortable with his skepticism regarding historical material, all will welcome his thorough treatment of the text and extensive introductory section.

Among the prophets three books deserve mention. The verse-by-verse expositions of H. C. Leupold are by now familiar to most readers. His Exposition of Isaiah, Volume II* (Baker) covers chapters 40–66 and follows the same format as the previous volume. Though rejecting a second and third Isaiah, Leupold freely admits that the material of the prophecy “obviously implies that the Exile … has taken place.…” From there on, matters of introduction are generally passed over in favor of a running commentary on the text.

From the Dispensational perspective comes another book on the Prophet Daniel. Daniel, the Key to Prophetic Revelation* (Moody) by John F. Walvoord is primarily a theological and historical commentary. The author is well versed in all prophetic positions and quotes various authorities widely, but gives too little help to the student seeking to understand the meaning of the text itself.

A third book is just the opposite of Walvoord’s. The Book of Amos (Schocken) by E. Hammershaimb is short on theology but presents in English translation a splendid and detailed commentary on the Hebrew text of the prophet. This is not a book for the beginner, but the serious student of Amos will find each page rich in philological detail.

Misplaced Humility

Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs.…

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition and settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason.—G. K. CHESTERTON in Orthodoxy (copyright 1936 by Dodd, Mead).

SHORTER COMMENTARIES AND SERMONIC COLLECTIONS The books that follow make no claim to be full, exegetical works, but have a value commensurate with a more limited purpose in writing. Deuteronomy: The Gospel of Love* (Moody) by Samuel J. Schultz is a worthy addition to the brief volumes of the “Everyman’s Bible Commentary.” Also issued in 1971 were the first two Old Testament volumes in “The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible.” The First Book of Samuel* by Peter R. Ackroyd and Amos, Hosea, Micah* by Henry McKeating are useful if used with discretion and supplemented by something more in depth. The latest in Zondervan’s “Study Guide” series is the slender but carefully written Job* by D. David Garland. On the Psalms, two books of sermons are offered for the first time. Those familiar with the radio preaching of David A. Hubbard (“The Joyful Sound”) will welcome Psalms For All Seasons* (Eerdmans), a paperback book of meditations on thirteen key psalms. Less familiar to most Americans is the Dutch preacher-theologian G. Th. Rothuizen, whose thoughts about the witness of each of the first fifty psalms are presented in Landscape* (John Knox). The chapters are both devotional and practical, and Rothuizen’s work should find a wide audience in conservative circles, despite the distinctly Dutch flavor of the work.

Our next book is neither a commentary nor a collection of sermons. Jacques Ellul, one of today’s most stimulating thinkers, presents in The Judgment of Jonah* (Eerdmans) a Jonah who is theologically related to the Christian. The worth of Ellul is not in the small details of theology but in the sometimes disturbing but never merely comforting direction of his thought.

A further monograph on a prophet challenges traditional views on the background of much of Jeremiah. Preaching to the Exiles (Schocken) by E. W. Nicholson concludes that much of the prose tradition of that prophet is theological writing originating with the “Deuteronomists” on the basis of some “original sayings of Jeremiah.”

Finally, mention should be made of two short books that are more history than commentary but follow a biblical outline. Solomon to the Exile* (Baker) by John C. Whitcomb is little more than a running historical commentary on the events described in the Bible for that period. But the author has a good knowledge of secular sources, and the book will be useful to those who want help in this area. Quite an opposite critical approach is taken by Peter R. Ackroyd in a volume in “The New Clarendon Bible,” Israel Under Babylon and Persia* (Oxford). Whereas Whitcomb might be accused of ignoring obvious problems in biblical history, Ackroyd assumes a critical reconstruction that enables him confidently to include in the literature of his period such works as the Deuteronomic History and the Priestly Work. Nevertheless, the book presents a wealth of historical and exegetical material and is a worthy addition to the series it represents.

ADDITIONAL VOLUMES OF NOTE In the field of introduction, James K. West’s Introduction to the Old Testament* (Macmillan) is designed for the college market. It is well written and illustrated, but not meant to replace the standard reference works. Two short handbooks that meet a real need are Literary Criticism of the Old Testament* by N. C. Habel and Form Criticism of the Old Testament* by G. M. Tucker (both Fortress). Both authors are committed to the subjects they discuss and give a brief (if sometimes too facile) case for the use of the method in question. In the field of Semitic linguistics, John C. L. Gibson’s Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, Volume 1: Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions (Clarendon) replaces G. A. Cooke’s standard though outdated work. Although this is now the best text available in English, most students of the subject will continue to use the German work of H. Donner and W. Rollig. Also in the field of linguistics is the massive work of Saul Levin, The Indo-European and Semitic Languages (State University of New York). If the author’s claims are correct, Hebrew shares with Sanskrit and Greek certain common concepts and development, and the widely held view of separate development of the families will have to be abandoned. A very different kind of volume, designed for Roman Catholic laymen but of use to a Protestant audience as well, is Evode Beaucamp’s Prophetic Intervention in the History of Man* (Alba House). Father Beaucamp has written a clear and readable introduction to each of the major prophets. Finally, a plum for the student of rabbinics comes in Judah Goldin’s scholarly book The Song at the Sea (Yale), a commentary on the oldest extant Jewish commentary (The Shirta) on Exodus 15.

SIGNIFICANT REPRINT OR PAPERBACK EDITIONS The top news in this section is Kregel’s reprint of the classic work of E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament*. This work, first issued in a 700-page abridgment in English in 1847, is possibly the most complete commentary on Messianic predictions ever written. Though it is photomechanically reproduced, the type is clear and the format pleasant. The publisher is to be congratulated for having made this classic again available and at such a reasonable price.

From Zondervan have come useful paperback editions of two small books by H. L. Ellison. Job: From Tragedy to Triumph* (1958) and The Old Testament Prophets: Men Spake From God* (1952) are handbooks known to many but should have an even wider audience in their new dress.

Finally, a more technical and recent study that is now available in paperback is Klaus Koch’s The Growth of the Biblical Tradition (Scribners), a book that three years ago provided the English-speaking world with its first complete study of form criticism.

SUMMARY Although 1971 may not have been “the year of the book” for followers of the Old Testament scene, the contributions show the continuing vitality of certain fields, particularly Old Testament history and theology. The current year promises a better selection of commentaries, and we may hope that the supply of stimulating theological work will continue unabated. Happy reading!

Carl E. Armerding teaches Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver. He received the B.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Brandeis. He spent a year in Israel doing post-doctoral study.